Cooling Performances of Perforated-Finned Heat Sinks

Abstract

Cooling performances of perforated-finned heat sinks (PFHS) are investigated in the laminar forced convection heat transfer mode, through detailed experiments. Perforations like windows with square cross sections are placed on the lateral surfaces of the fins. Cooling performances are evaluated due to changes in both porosities and perforation sizes. Thermal characteristics are reported based on pumping power, in order to provide more practical insight about performances of PFHSs in real applications. It is found that at a constant perforation size, there is an optimum porosity that results in the largest heat transfer coefficient. For a fixed porosity, increasing the number of perforations (reducing the perforation size) results in an enhancement of heat transfer rate due to repeated interruption of the thermal boundary layer. The opposite trend is observed for PFHSs with larger perforation sizes. This indicates that there is an optimum perforation size and distance between perforations in order to achieve the maximum heat transfer coefficients at a constant porosity. Also, a PFHS results in a smaller temperature non-uniformity across the heat sink base, as well as a more rapid reduction in temperature non-uniformity on the heat sink base by increasing pumping power. In addition, the advantage of a PFHS to reduce the overall weight of the cooling system is incorporated into thermal characteristics of the heat sinks, and demonstrated by the mass specific heat transfer coefficient.